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There’s a case for re-evaluating Agatha Christie as a serious dramatist. As the only female writer to have had three plays in the West End at the same time (a record that remains unbroken since 1954), she’s certainly one of our most successful. When she died in 1977, lights were dimmed in theatres across London.

Occasionally, a new production reveals something fresh and vital – even dangerous – in her cosy mysteries; the BBC’s darkly exhilarating And Then There Were None was a case in point. The time is ripe for a bold director to strip away the twee period furnishings, and reveal her work’s sharper edges.

Brian Blessed is not that director, and The Hollow is not that show. The booming-voiced actor’s directorial debut makes The Mousetrap look cutting-edge. This is theatrical comfort food, served up in the idyllic setting of the Mill at Sonning – a beautiful 18th century flour-mill turned dinner theatre.

Rosalind Blessed as Henrietta Angkatell in The Hollow, with Alexander Neal as Edward AngkatellCredit:
Craig Sugden

The theatre is in Theresa May’s constituency, and the play is one she might do well to see: it has a thread of social anxiety running through it, hidden below its by-the-numbers whodunit structure. The pro-Empire butler drones about “this terrible Labour government,” before the maid cuts him off. “My mum’s Labour!” she snaps, but immediately looks sheepish, as if worried that she’s said the wrong thing. Later, a shop-clerk rails against her lack of opportunities (“unemployment always lurking around the corner, in spite of all the politicians’ brave words”).

Blessed’s direction ignores all this, aiming instead for camp. Subtlety, nuance and originality are out the window – but in fact all this is to the good. What would otherwise be serious faults – missing props, missed entrances – here become part of the charm. The acting is broad, even clumsy, but endearingly so. Noel White leaves no piece of chintzy scenery unchewed as the swivel-eyed detective. Jason Riddington’s boorish doctor delivers the least convincing death you’ll see onstage this year, while Emily Stride gives a deliciously cartoonish turn as his repressed widow.

Brian Blessed, with his daughter RosalindCredit:
Steve Knight

Blessed (who received an OBE last month) is the oldest man ever to have trekked to the magnetic north pole. He’s climbed Kilimanjaro and completed space training in Russia. When I asked him last month if he had any plans for the near future, he replied, quite earnestly, “I want to go to Mars.” Given the scale of his ambitions, The Hollow is remarkably small.

His next show, he added, will be a revival of Tennessee Williams’ Camino Real, “with 80 dancers, opera singers, all that kind of thing. Big special effects! Even spaceships in it – imagine that!” I can, and it would suit his talents better than this.

Midge Harvey and Hildegard Neil in The HollowCredit:
Craig Sugden

That said, it’s easy to see why Blessed chose this play first. It’s a sentimental, personal project, a labour of love. Back in the Fifties, The Hollow gave him his first break in repertory theatre (as Gudgeon the butler). Here, the cast is led by his family. His wife Hildegard Neil, who played Cleopatra to Charlton Heston’s Antony in his 1972 film, is convincing as a dotty old aristocrat. Meanwhile, his daughter Rosalind (as a sardonic sculptor) has clearly inherited her father’s lung capacity.

Between them, they make the most of Christie’s one-liners: “She played merry hell with protocol at dinner parties – and that, dear Henrietta, is the blackest of crimes.” The plot is not one of the writer’s best, but it hardly matters. This is a simple show from a simpler time. After the atrocious news of the past few days, it’s a much-needed escape.

“We’ve been living in the past!” wails a Nice Young Gel, prompting the reply: “Sometimes the past is a very pleasant place to live.” Quite so.